There's a little more info coming in on the Focus Groups being carried out by Research.bm on behalf of Government (Dept. of Communications or DCI).
Two more people contacted me today, both who were turned away as the groups were over-attended. They got $100 and a 'thanks for coming out'.
But someone who did attend has made it clear that political issues relating to the specific performance and favourability of Alex Scott and the PLP were discussed.
Questions like:
"Rate the Premier's performance on a scale of 1-5"
and
"Use one word to describe the current Government".
That's political and completely out of order. It is inappropriate to use taxpayer funds through the DCI or any department to research on political matters, which is exactly what is going on.
The civil service is supposed to be entirely a-political and this type of stuff is not permitted. Taxpayer funds are not to be used for political activities. Sure PR can be a little fuzzy but this isn't even on the fringe, it is just blasting right through the ethics and independence of the civil service. The civil service has been compromised and taxpayer dollars used inappropriately.
I've always been suspicious of the rapidly growing DCI under the PLP. The Central Policy Unit (CPU), and DCI seem to me like a permanent taxpayer funded campaign organisation for the PLP.
Someone has to answer for this. We deserve to know exactly what went on in these sessions, whose budget it came out of, what the questions were etc..
The session was described to me as a 'fishing expedition' and detailed a little more in this general assessment by an attendee:
"The bulk of the evening was focused around the current government, how we felt they were doing, what we felt were their strengths and areas where they should improve and at the end we were given handouts listing 10 issues from the throne speech (the same issues we had discussed all evening - housing, health, seniors, safety, tourism, finance, education...) with details below and we were asked to add out thoughts and comments to the sheet and asked how important each item was to us and what we would like to see happen in each area."
Larry Dennis (Auditor General), we have another job for you, seeing as the Ombudsman is yet to be appointed.
Posted by Christian S. Dunleavy